News Archives - 2007

Making a Mark on Psychology and the Law

Jan. 8, 2006

Psychology professor Nancy Steblay and a team of student researchers
have partnered with Hennepin County police officers to research, apply
and test changes in police lineups to help reduce the chances of convicting
innocent people.

In the past 14 years, DNA testing has exonerated 183 people from crimes
they did not commit but for which they were convicted. In 75% of these
cases, primary evidence for conviction was identification by a witness.

When Professor Steblay first encountered early research on simple changes
in line-up procedure that could reduce the rate of false identifications,
she was intrigued, seeing an ideal application of laboratory research
and theory. In the late 1990s, the Department of Justice could no longer
ignore that increasing numbers of people were being proven innocent after
wrongful convictions. Attorney General Janet Reno gathered government
researchers who in turn produced an in-depth study on lineup procedures.
At the time, Augsburg did not have a laboratory to conduct its own research
on the subject, so Nancy turned to producing comprehensive reviews and
sytheses of existing research.

Nancy’s meta-analyses garnered national attention and confirmed
that the rate of false identification is lowered when the lineup subjects
are presented to the witness one at a time (usually shown in photos),
rather than all at once. When Augsburg gained a psychology lab, Nancy
involved students in research. “It became the students’ assignment
to shoot a crime, and then to help me construct the line-up.”

In 2003 Hennepin County initiated a pilot-project to test new line-up
procedures and with the help of a National Institute of Justice grant,
Nancy joined the project as a data analyst. When questions came up in
the field, Nancy and student researchers tested them in the Augsburg
laboratory.

With the current popularity of TV crime shows attracting more students
to forensics, Augsburg launched a concentration in psychology and law.
Augsburg is one of the few schools that offer psychology and law at the
undergraduate level.